


In Souls As Countries

by B29



Category: Sparks Nevada Marshal on Mars, The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Genre: Fully Chewing Out Your Dead Pal, Grief/Mourning, Sparks Nevada’s Dreams, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27078802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B29/pseuds/B29
Summary: Ain’t many flowers around these parts of G'loot Praktaw, so when Red rides out to visit Croach, she brings things as she feels he’d appreciate.
Relationships: Cactoid Jim/The Red Plains Rider, Croach the Tracker/Sparks Nevada, Sparks Nevada/The Red Plains Rider, The Red Plains Rider & Croach the Tracker
Kudos: 7





	In Souls As Countries

Ain’t many flowers around these parts of G'loot Praktaw, so when Red rides out to visit Croach, she brings things as she feels he’d appreciate. One of Nevada’s hats; a buckle as had come loose from high up on his boot; a bit of wood Nevada’d been whittling by their campfire; Croach’s own copy of _Bushwackers of Neptune_ , after Nevada’d thrown it at the Marshal Station wall one night after they got back and found it still lyin’ on Croach’s old desk.

She considered bringing a bottle of rotgut once, but Nevada won’t even touch them of late, so in the end she drank it herself. 

This time she’s brought along a bit of crumpled paperwork. Normally she thinks of how Croach woulda used all those senses to detect the traces of Nevadaness on her gifts, but she likes how anyone in town could look at this one and see all the grief and feelin’ in it plain as day.

Nevada does not never _ever_ crumple his paperwork.

She pulls it from her pocket as she dismounts, sets the fragile little ball of it down in front of the mound of earth and the ridge of spider claws pokin’ up outta it. Like always, she touches her own necklace sorta to it, like a kinda salute.

(Ain’t G’loot Praktaw tradition to bury the dead in boxes, but it also ain’t tradition to wear jewellery of your best gal’s first kill, and Nevada had wanted a grave, and she thinks he’d marked it up with the necklace outta respect to whatever he thinks was still goin’ on with her and Croach, never mindin’ that she still is _married to Jim,_ sorta. So anyways Red hadn’t stopped him.)

“Did this yesterday,” she says, in her most casually conversational, definitely-not-ornery, ain’t-accusin’-ya-none voice, gesturing to the crushed permit application form. “An’ last night he had The Dream again.”

Croach says nothing back.

“Probable you don’t realise,” she continues slowly, settling herself down in the dust next’a him, “but it is _real_ significant, him dreamin’ that. Settin’ aside the part where you consume his flesh an' he wakes up screamin' like Felton faced with an insect.”

She pauses to imagine Croach’s most perplexed expression, his deep voice, a ringing demand that she _explicate further, The Red Plains Rider._

“‘Mong humans,” she continues patiently, “bringin’ breakfast to a person in bed is a _mighty_ intimate gesture. Somethin’ you does for a partner. Most often, for a husband, or wife, or spouse of any gender or none.”

She eyes up the yellowing little row of phalanges as hard as she’s able.

“All together, Croach, I think it’s well past time you and I accepted that Nevada knows.”

Her imagination fails her now, for she never claimed to have an overabundance of it to start with and Croach had explained in great detail just how much onus she’d be in if ever she told Nevada exactly _why_ Croach had never once, in all the cycles of their courtship, considered her ‘incompatible’ until as he’d ridden with Nevada and shown him his feet.

Or why she’d known, after he left, that he’d be right back at the Marshal Station, never mind that Nevada had released him of onus.

Or why after he’d righted everything onus-wise beyond what anyone could question, and Nevada’d taken off, Croach hadn’t gone back to the tribe but stayed in town drinkin’ like, for example, a person whose betrothed din’t know they was betrothed under the feet-based betrothin’ customs of G’loot Praktaw and so had just gone run off abandoned their same betrothed. For example.

Croach’d still believed that Nevada hadn’t a clue, though, and Red had believed it too right up until she’d kissed Nevada one night a few weeks back and he’d caught her shoulders and said _Red, I can’t, Croach_ – 

And then he’d gone off out, prob’ly right here to this grave if Red is any judge, which she is, and come back with his jaw set an’ just said _don’t see why not_ and then they’d done some stuff which’d not been like it was with Jim but nonetheless as satisfactory as ever, what with Nevada bein’ no slouch an’ him likin’ so much how she’s mouthy and the both of them competitive as all heck, except _he hadn’t taken his socks off once_.

Yep. On balance, she reckons he must know _somethin’_. Even if it’s just deep down in his soul that he knows it and not in his head, which Red considers a far more appropriate place for knowin’ stuff, Nevada hadn’t never been so careful of his feet before, and though one time early days she’d asked what he dreamed of and he’d really said _some darned cat_ , the new nightmares do seem terrible domestic as well as just terrible.

“He knows,” she tells Croach, “sorta, but he won’t say. And I knows, but I can’t say, on account of you puttin’ me under onus to your departed soul for all eternity if I speak of it.”

The silence that falls after that is kinda melancholy, so Red reaches for the little screwed-up bit’a paper and tosses it up in the air a few times, and battles on.

“So’s seeing as I’m still harbourin’ a feelin’ for my husband Jim, and he’s still harbourin’ the same for _his_ husband, who’s you, I thought I’d come tell you I’m leaving Nevada, and M- G’loot Praktaw, and I’m gon’ look for Jim, and I jus’ wanted to ask you one last thing, Croach, on account of I love Nevada an' him bein' my oldest friend after you and it worryin’ me to see him so sad and throwin’ stuff and not even takin’ proper pleasure in bein’ Marshal again.”

She takes a deep breath. 

“D’ya think– I mean, I just been wonderin’ an' worryin' and I jus'–”

Croach waits patiently for her to be done mumbling.

“I jus’ think, Croach– is this. Y’know. It?"

But Croach, who is her oldest and best friend in the universe, who'd always known exactly how bad a thing was compared to every other bad thing as had ever happened to him, went and got hisself shot for _Mercy goddamn Laredo_ and left her an' Nevada wanderin' around Mars with two great big matching holes in their hearts and nothin' to fill them that either of them can find and nobody to tell them if this is, maybe, actually worse than any other times.

"Croach. D'ya think this is- is this the end of Sparks Nevada?”


End file.
